Even though he’s thirty-five and living at home with his parents in his old room, no one makes fun of him. When he walks into town everyone is kind and polite. At the coffee shop he gets free donuts and the kids who work at the pizza joint always give him two free slices of pepperoni. People go out of their way to help him. He wonders if they were like this before.
Each night at dinner his mother says, We’re so glad you’re home, Alfred.
His father says, Yes, compared to the alternatives, we’re very glad indeed.
These exchanges confuse Alfred, who doesn’t remember his parents ever being glad about much of anything, much less something he did. Still, he’s happy they’re happy. Better late than never, as the saying goes.
After a while Alfred gets restless. It’s been six months and the doctors and specialists and therapists still agree he still hasn’t eased back into the real world. While they have his best interests in mind the practical effect of all their care is that they’re driving him nuts. He is a thirty-five year old man, after all, and despite the accident and settlement he still has a lot of living to do.
He decides to get a job.
The decision presents an immediate conundrum: he isn’t allowed to drive a car and public transportation is out of the question. That leaves the mall (yech!) the gas station (yawn) or the airport (yay!).
The doctors and specialists and therapists aren’t happy with the idea but if there’s one thing about Alfred, once he gets a notion in his head, as his father says, you can’t blast it out with dynamite. Besides, his parents tell them their son used to fly airplanes himself. Alfred laughs inside. He’s never even been on a plane much less flown one. Still, it’s nice they’re on his side these days.
His mother says, We should let him do at least one thing he loves.
So one Monday morning he goes to the airport. It’s a long walk, more than an hour. It doesn’t matter, because the whole time Alfred’s eyes are on the sky, watching airliners landing and taking off. Normally that distance is out of bounds but his father says, Damned if he doesn’t remember the way.
His first trip is a bit of a fiasco. His mother walks with him to the terminal and watches him walk into the huge building. He turns and waves at her like he’s going on a trip. He passes the baggage carousels and the car rental desks with long lines of people, the Information Desk and the security desk, the big wall of TV screens with the Arrivals and Departures. He takes the escalator upstairs and wanders to the Alaska Airlines gates.
Which is when all hell breaks loose.
Suddenly he’s on the floor and people are shouting at him.
How did you get through security?!
Where’s your boarding pass?!
How did you get through security?!
Have you had contact with any known terror groups in the last eighteen months?!
How did you get through security?!
It turns out his getting through security is a really big deal. They take him to a small dark room where a man and a woman in dark suits ask him more questions while two security officers stand by the door. The questions and the noise and the excitement confuse him. He just walked into the terminal like a normal person. Good grief, is the world going crazy? He says he’s looking for a job but they don’t believe him.
They keep him in the small room until his parents arrive and after an hour of answering questions themselves are allowed to take him home.
At dinner his mother says, We’re so glad you’re home safe, Alfred. I think this was too big a step.
And his father says, Yes, especially considering the alternatives you could have faced today. But we’re very glad indeed.
The next day one of the therapists comes to the house and says gravely, You see, this is why Alfred has to ease back into the real world slowly. Much more slowly.
After that it gets trickier for him to go to the airport. He’s allowed to go out again, but he just goes to the park down the street and sits on a bench under a big willow tree and watches the ducks and geese in the pond and the kids playing on the slides and swings and the people jogging, skating, and biking past. He meets a few people and it’s perfectly pleasant but it’s no Sea-Tac. His mother drives by every couple of hours to check on him. Finally after two weeks his mother and father are convinced he’s found a place to go where he won’t get into trouble. His mother stops driving by, and a few days later Alfred starts going back to the airport. He doesn’t like lying to his parents but he needs a job. He’ll go bonkers if he can’t get one soon.
The second time he visits the airport he’s more careful. He knows his mistake was not taking stock of the situation before barging in. Any old fool knows better than to do that. He chalks it up to the accident and settlement and resolves not to make the same mistake twice. He walks past the baggage carousels and the rental car desks with their long lines and rides the escalator up to the departure floor. This time instead of going into the terminal he finds a place to sit.
He sits in a seat across from the Alaska Airlines counters for an hour and then gets thirsty. He walks to an airport shop to buy a Coca-Cola. The girl behind the counter is very nice and doesn’t charge him for the can of soda. She talks to him and he tells her he’s going to apply for a job. She seems very happy to hear that. He feels much better about this visit.
A few minutes after he returns to his seat he sees another girl. He nearly drops his can of Coca-Cola. She’s the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. She has long red hair and a round face and skin that makes him think of the pink roses in the garden at home. She’s wearing a blue sundress with white polka dots. As she passes he sees that her face is freckled and she has bright blue eyes.
Something else strikes him, and it’s the reason he doesn’t talk to her. There’s a look on her face, something at the corners of her lips and in the blue of her eyes. She’s like one of those Seattle days when you can’t tell if the sun is breaking through the clouds or the clouds are racing across the face of the sun. It throws him off, just enough to keep his butt planted in the seat when she walks by less that five feet from him and gets on the escalator to the ground floor. As she passes he smells vanilla, like the smell of the kitchen when his mother makes her famous chocolate chip cookies.
He doesn’t see her again for two weeks. But what a time! He becomes a full-time airport employee. His job is to watch the terminal. He gets lunch each day at the Red Robin and they never charge him because he’s an airport employee. He takes his lunch break when there’s a lull in activity and the wait staff and bar staff and managers talk with him. He never pays for his Coca-Cola breaks at the shop, either. He does the job for the love of the airport and goes home with a few dollars in his pocket every day. He’s very proud but he can’t tell his parents about the money he’s earning because they’d know he’s going back to the airport. He keeps the money in a shoebox under his bed. It feels a little adolescent but it will do for now.
The next time he sees her she’s wearing a pale yellow dress with blue butterflies on it. It’s about the most beautiful dress he’s ever seen. Her hair is tied in a ponytail and she’s carrying a red purse and pulling a black carry-on.
This time he stands up and introduces himself. She looks at him and smiles but doesn’t say anything. He asks if there’s anything he can do for her here at the airport, and she smiles but still doesn’t answer. Finally he goes for the simple approach and asks her how her day is going. This time her smile fades a little bit and she shrugs.
Alfred is confused. He knows enough about girls to know that if she didn’t want to talk to him she wouldn’t have stopped, much less smiled at him.
She puts her hands over her ears and shakes her head, then one hand over her mouth and shakes her head again.
He still doesn’t understand. She takes a small notepad out of her red purse. She writes something then tears off the page and hands it to him.